


Long Live--Part 3

by LaVieEnRose



Series: Long Live [3]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: CF, Chronic Illness, Disabled Character, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, cystic fibrosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:40:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27720143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: No one:Absolutely no one:Absolutely no one who has ever lived:Me: What if I rewrite the entire series but give Justin cystic fibrosisSeason 3.
Relationships: Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Series: Long Live [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015032
Comments: 28
Kudos: 103





	Long Live--Part 3

Brian has all his things packed up when Justin goes to the loft the next morning. One duffel bag and a suitcase. That's all it takes. 

Justin says, “About school—” 

Brian shrugs. “We signed a contract.”

“Right.” The only thing they ever really agreed upon. 

Brian runs a hand down his face. He looks really, really tired. “Keep up with your treatments,” he says.

Justin wants to hug him, but he doesn't do it. “I will.”

**

Living with Ethan is like something out of a dream. 

He wakes up in the morning and there's coffee brewing and his nebulizer and his vest are set up and waiting for him. Ethan plays for him while he does his treatments and does pharmacy runs when Justin's feeling under the weather. Justin hasn't had someone else to count on to handle medical stuff since he was a child, and as much as he loves and appreciates what Jen did for him, it's amazing how different it feels coming from someone who's choosing to do it. Ethan isn't obligated. Ethan wants him.

He asks questions, reads articles, reads a whole damn _book_ about supporting your partner through chronic illness. The first time Justin gets sick, runs a fever and coughs up blood and has to scamper off to the doctor, Ethan's attentive without being panicky, getting washcloths for his head and Back when Justin used to daydream about being in a relationship, this was what it was. Some magical person who wouldn't get sick of him, who loved his disease as much as they loved him. 

He has what he always wanted. 

So he should be really happy, but he keeps watching Brian at the diner and wondering if he's sleeping.

**

He's still working with Michael on the comic book. It's awkward. Michael's always telling him how great Brian is doing, which would be a relief if it sounded true. 

“How's he doing at work?” Justin can't resist asking one day.

Michael glances up from the panels he's going over. “Fine.”

“Did he get that account? With the—” 

“Why don't you ask him yourself?” Michael says, and Justin shuts up.

**

Justin's working at the diner the day it catches on fire.

It's not as dramatic as it sounds. The panini press malfunctions and the next thing you know, half the kitchen is up in flames. Everyone gets out fine and no one's hurt and the cook gets in there with the fire extinguisher before too much damage is done, but it's all very dramatic. And smoky. Justin ducks around to the alleyway and coughs until his vision blacks out.

Brian was in the diner too, sipping a coffee Justin poured for him, and he comes around to the alley and braces Justin's shoulder against the wall so he doesn't fall forwards. Justin tries to thank him, but he can't get a word or a breath in, and Brian says, “It's fine, just focus on what you're doing,” which is kind of a funny thing to say about coughing, but whatever. 

Justin spits blood on the ground and gasps in a breath. 

“Go tell the firemen you need oxygen,” Brian says.

Justin shakes his head, feels sweat pouring off of him. “I'm okay.”

“You are, in fact, objectively not okay. Go.”

He's too tired to argue, and oxygen really does sound nice, so he stumbles over to the firemen and doesn't even get out the words “I have CF” before they have him sat down and strapped in. Justin looks around for Brian once he's feeling a little more alive, but he's gone.

That night, Ethan makes him dinner and tells him how brave he was.

**

Ethan prefers quiet nights at home, which have their appeal—the sex, it's the sex—but a man cannot live on Netflix alone. “Come out with me,” he begs Ethan, tugging on his hand. “Just once. Maybe you'll like it!”

“I've done it before!” Ethan laughs. “You think I got to twenty-one without ever going to a club?”

“All burnt out before he's even legal.” Justin kisses him. “Come with me. We'll have fun. I'll get drunk and feel you up.”

“You can do that here.”

“Ah, but will I.”

Ethan gives him a kiss and ruffles the back of Justin's hair. Justin purrs. “Stay here,” Ethan says. “You've been coughing a lot.”

“I'm fiiiine. I want to go.”

“Okay, you go,” Ethan says. “Have fun, get drunk and riled up and then come home to me.”

Justin deflates. “I want to show you off.”

“I don't care what they think,” Ethan says. “I only care what you think.”

So Justin goes, closing the door on Ethan's _are you sure you're feeling up to it we could just stay in I'll make you something_ and heads out to Babylon. It's been easily two months since he's been out, and it feels strange and electrified, like coming back to school after the summer. 

He gets a drink to do his usual survey before he starts dancing and gives a small wave to Ted and Emmett, who very much do not invite him to join him. (And apparently are a couple now?) It stings, but it’s also vindicating to have proof of what he knew deep down a long; these were Brian’s friends, not his. This was Brian’s loft, Brian’s scene, Brian’s rules, Brian’s life. Justin was always a tourist.

Of course, he appears and sidles up to Justin at the bar. “Well well well, if it isn’t little boy lost.”

It’s been a few days since Justin’s seen him, and he missed him so much it physically hurt. Justin does not even sort of understand his life or what he’s doing or why anyone even begins to put up with him.

“Doing okay?” he asks Brian.

Brian scans the crowd. “Fabulous.”

“I saw that ad for whatever that cough medicine is in Out. It looked good.”

“It doesn’t bode well if you don’t remember the brand.”

“Well, I’m not exactly the target audience, with the anaphylactic shock aspect.”

“Depends who you ask,” Brian says, and Justin sticks out his tongue. “See anyone you like?”

Justin gives him a look.

“Ah, I forgot,” Brian says. “You’re married now.”

“Haven’t you heard? Monogamy is the new...something.”

“Something, all right.” Brian raises his glass towards a man in the crowd, tall and muscled, dark hair, very much not-Justin. “Him.”

“He’s hot.”

“Mmmhmm.” Brian leans down and kisses Justin’s cheek, too close to his mouth. “See you.”

Justin says “Later,” and leans against the bar to catch his breath as Brian disappears into the throng.

**

“Whatcha working on?” he asks Brian a few days later, as he drops off his omelette and home fries.

Brian flashes him a big, fake smile. “Funny you should ask.”

“Oh lord.”

“I need your help. I’m working on this project for the center—”

Justin snorts. “You and the center?”

“They’re giving me a slight courtesy fee.”

“But of course.”

“And I’d like to pass some of that fee into you.”

“I have told you eleven thousand times,” Justin says. “I don’t need your money.”

“Except what I pay for school.”

“Yes. I do need that money.”

“This isn’t charity,” Brian says. “I need a poster for this whole Carnivale shenanigan. Two hundred dollars?”

“Sure.”

Brian rolls his eyes. “Haggle.”

“No.”

“You really are a pain in my ass,” Brian says.

“Then it’s a good thing I left,” Justin says, and a darkness passes over Brian’s face and Justin immediately knows he’s gone too far, that he’s broken their unspoken contract to never mention that they were together.

He’s never been good at these unspoken contracts, is the thing.

“I’ll have it to you by Friday,” Justin says, and Brian nods.

**

He doesn't get to attend the Carnivale, though, despite Brian putting both his and Ethan's names on the list, because he has to go to this mixer with the kids in Ethan's program. He doesn't even go to the mixers for the visual arts students. 

“I talk about you all the time,” Ethan says. “They're starting to think I made you up and I need professional help.”

“I'm really not feeling up to it,” Justin says, which is kind of a lie just because he doesn't want to go, but whatever, grab the perks where you can get them.

“They know your situation,” Ethan says, dropping a kiss on the back of Justin's neck. “No one expects you to be high-energy. Plus it's not really that kind of party.”

Cool, so a low-key party with fifty people who know he's sick. Yeah, that sounds exactly like Justin's cup of tea. “Really, you'd have more fun without me.”

“Impossible.”

So Justin goes, in his continuing efforts to be a good boyfriend, which still after a few months feels like wearing clothes that aren't his. But he loves Ethan, and God, Ethan is so good to him. Last week when Justin was feeling like crap Ethan refilled his pill organizer for him and didn't make a single mistake. Justin can barely do that. 

He spends as long as he can listening to Ethan talk music terms with the other majors and finally excuses himself to get a drink. This girl Elise, black hair and pretty eyes, comes up to him while he's pouring and says, “You and Ethan are adorable, you know.”

Justin smiles at her.

“He's great, isn't he?”

“He's amazing.”

“And you, with what you have to go through...I mean, I can't even imagine—”

“Thank you,” Justin says. “Excuse me.”

But the whole night is variations on a theme. _You look so much healthier than I expected, from what Ethan's told us. Isn't he just a saint? Doesn't your delicate sick little soul give you so much inspiration? You and Ethan's relationship must be so much deeper and bigger and truer than anything else you can imagine, because you're sick and he's the angel who doesn't mind._

Justin has three drinks and tells Ethan he's going to go home and get some rest. He makes sure to say it in front of people, so Ethan will look like an asshole if he puts up any sort of fight. Sure enough, Ethan kisses him and reminds him that he didn't do a nebulizer this morning so he should do one before bed and everyone oohs and awws at their adorable codependentness and Justin goes to Carnivale. 

It doesn't take long to find Brian, though Justin isn't even sure if he was consciously looking for him. He smiles a little when he sees Justin and comes towards him. He's dressed up glittery and hot, in an open vest and a top hat.

“I thought you had other obligations,” Brian says.

“Ah, yes, being Cystic Fibrosis Boy at an orchestra mixer.”

“If it helps, I think your cystic fibrosis is incredibly boring.”

“It does, thank you.” He coughs a little and rolls his eyes at himself. “I just got really tired of being the sick boyfriend.”

“Ah, then you are in luck, because this is Carnivale. Here you are neither sick nor a boyfriend.” He takes his top hat off and perches it on Justin's head. “You're a...ringmaster, or something.”

There's a lot of fire and smoke in here, and it's messing with Justin's lungs a bit. “Do you want to go outside?”

Brian glances around and says, “Yeah, okay.”

They end up on a loading dock behind the conference center. Brian bitches that this would be a perfect place for a cigarette, and Justin sits and lets his legs dangle.

“What's on your mind?” Brian says.

 _Why you're still giving me the time of day._ “You, mostly,” he says.

Brian sighs and sits down next to him. 

“Are you happy?” Brian says.

“I'm more happy than not happy,” Justin says.

“Probably about all you can hope for, considering.”

“Considering I'm dying?”

Brian gives him a look. “Considering the world.”

“Sorry. Got my poor delicate constitution on my mind.”

Brian laughs and swings his legs. “So you had to be the wife for a night. I hear that's part of the deal.”

“The wife who's dying of tuberculosis.”

“The best kind.”

“Sometimes I wish nobody knew,” Justin says. “I know it's not safe and I know it's not practical, but sometimes...”

“Yeah,” Brian says. He clears his throat. “So what's it like?”

“CF? It's great.”

Brian rolls his eyes. “Being in a relationship.”

“Oh.” Justin looks at him sideways. “You ever done it?”

“Sure, for a night.”

Justin laughs. “I think there's the relationship part and the monogamy part. They're not part and parcel, you know.”

“Yeah, that's what they always say.”

“Maybe you should get your head out of the '90s.”

“Never.”

Justin sighs and coughs. “I don't know. I think I like it. It's like...it's stable. It's comforting. Like a blanket.”

“You do like blankets.”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn't sound very exciting, though.”

“Sometimes exciting just gets exhausting,” Justin says. “When you don't have that much energy to begin with.”

“Hmm,” is all Brian says.

Justin says, “Maybe that was the problem. You don't get tired and I'm always tired.”

“You being sick was never the problem,” Brian says, and now he sounds exhausted. Justin shivers, and Brian takes his jacket off and puts it around his shoulders.

“I know you want me to be happy,” Justin says.

Brian tilts his head up at the stars. “Oh, I want all sorts of things.”

“You know I want you to be happy too, right?”

There's a long pause, but finally Brian says, “I know that.”

Justin takes his hand and they sit there, not looking at each other, for a long time.

Justin doesn't have to feel guilty. He's not a sick and he's not a boyfriend, not here.

He's just a moon, orbiting a planet.

**

“Okay,” Ethan says. “The number for my hotel is on the refrigerator. And the concert hall should know how to reach me if I'm there. And my mom is ten minutes away if you need—”

“I've been alone before,” Justin says. “I'll be fine.”

Ethan bites a nail. “Yeah, okay.” 

Ethan's headed out for the weekend to fill in for some violinist who had to drop out. It's a big opportunity, and Justin would ordinarily come, since it's just a few hours' drive, but he's not feeling fantastic and he has this huge project he needs to get finished anyway. He's sort of looking forward to a quiet weekend, maybe capped off with a night at Babylon if he gets his work done in time, but he loves seeing Ethan play and he's never done an audience like this before, and a big part of him feels guilty for not being there.

Another part of him just feels annoyed that Ethan apparently thinks he needs his hand held to do a few nights on his own. 

“I'll call you once I get to the hotel,” Ethan says. 

“Okay. Travel safe.”

Ethan cups his chin and kisses him. “I love you.”

Justin smiles and feels safe. “Love you.”

He feels restless after Ethan leaves, so he starts working on his project, but he sort of hates everything he's sketching and it just gets worse and worse the more he tries. He does a treatment and watches Youtube videos and texts a stupid joke to Daphne and Leo then, fuck it, to Brian, but neither of them answers right away so that doesn't help. He rolls around on his bed and thinks about the cab Ethan took the train station, and Ethan's car just sitting unused in the parking lot. Poor car. Probably misses Ethan.

Fuck it. Road trips are good for inspiration, right? He can see Ethan perform tonight and drive back after, newly motivated and ready to go. And yeah, he's not feeling great, but he can feel not great in the car just as well as here. And he so rarely gets to do stuff spur of the moment. A road trip to New Jersey isn't exactly a wild story, but it's something. And Ethan will be so happy to see him.

He bundles up, goes down to the car, and feels like a good boyfriend, maybe for the first time.

**

Ethan is iridescent, and Justin swoons. 

As does the boy he watches follow Ethan back to his hotel room. 

**

He's crying in the hallway of a hotel room like the biggest fucking gay stereotype in the world, and Ethan just stands there.

“Who the fuck is he?” Justin says.

“His name's Stephen,” Ethan says. “We met a few weeks ago at—” 

“I don't give a fuck how long you've been cheating on me,” Justin says. “Why the fuck didn't you just... _you're_ the one who wanted this monogamy shit, why didn't you just talk to me?”

“It was never going to be anything serious with him,” Ethan says. “The plan was always to come back to you.”

“Come _back_ to me? When the fuck did you decide to leave?”

“I needed a break!” Ethan bursts. “I'm not perfect, okay? I'm not.”

“Oh, trust me, you don't need to convince me of that. A break from what? Being in a relationship? I thought you...”

But Ethan just gestures weakly at Justin, and it all comes together.

“Oh my God,” Justin whispers.

“I'm sorry,” Ethan says. “But all the stuff to take care of and keep in mind and all the time I spent worrying if you were okay—”

“Stop. Just stop.”

“And I knew how much you relied on me and just the stress and the pressure of that...”

Justin feels like he did back at Gus's party. Everything's swimming. 

“It's just too much for me,” Ethan says.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like hearing your worst fears about yourself come out of someone else's mouth. 

You weren't imagining it. You weren't overreacting. All those things you worried about were true, and every minute you thought that maybe, maybe they weren't, you were a fucking idiot.

“You should sit down,” Ethan says.

“Don't ever fucking tell me what to do again.”

**

Justin moves his stuff to Daphne's and doesn't get off the couch for three days. He does his treatments and watches movies and besides that pretends not to be alive.

“Ethan's trash,” Daphne keeps saying. “He's a lying asshole. Forget about him.”

“This has nothing to do with Ethan,” Justin says. “This is about me.”

**  
Every single sick person Justin's ever met worries about being a burden. Justin jokes about it, goes against it, rolls his eyes at it, because it's such a goddamn cliché that it's embarrassing. But of course he worries. He worries with his mother, who has no choice but to take care of him. He worries with Daph, who gets to turn it off and go to sleep at the end of the day. He worried about it with Brian, who sometimes acted like he'd forgotten Justin wasn't healthy. And he worried about it with Ethan. Who reassured him, over and over. Who made promises. 

Who lied. 

Or didn't lie. He thought he meant it. He thought Justin was doable, shitty lungs and all, that dealing with him wouldn't feel like a full time job if he loved him enough, and he was wrong. 

No wonder he and Brian fell apart. The amount that Justin needs is untenable. 

He's going to do this shit all by himself, every day, for the rest of his life, alone. Without the talking. Without the laughing. Just treatments, and hospitals, and time between treatments and hospitals.

At least he has his art, except he can't even sketch anymore.

He calls Leo and means to ask if it's impossible, if he's unlovable, if it's the disease or if it's _him_ or if there's no goddamn difference, if Leo will just marry him and they'll stay six feet away from each other for the rest of their abbreviated lives, but he just gets on the phone and sobs until he can't breathe. 

“Therapy,” Leo yells over him. “Go. To. Therapy.”

**

“So,” his therapist says. “The first thing Ethan knew about you was that you weren't healthy.”

“I guess.”

“And he was always fascinated with that, and he thought it made you special, and smarter, and inspirational. He called you his muse.”

Justin squirms. “Yeah.”

“What do you think he wanted from you?”

“He wanted to save me,” Justin says. “He wanted to keep me safe.”

“Is that possible?”

“No.”

His therapist is so gentle. “Then how could it have ever worked out?”

“I could have asked for less,” Justin says. “I could have...”

“What, pretended you were better?”

“Not pretended, just taken on more on my own.”

“Justin,” she says. “You have no idea how much you take on already. You're allowed to want someone to help.”

“I was already beating myself up for expecting too much from Brian,” Justin says. “And then I go and do the exact same thing again. I think that people won't be overwhelmed with this when it's like, by definition overwhelming.”

“What makes you think Brian was overwhelmed?”

Justin takes in a shaky breath. “I just feel like he was.”

“Why not find out for sure?”

“Okay, how.”

“You could ask him,” she says.

**

Justin does not, of course, ask him. Justin serves Brian his sandwiches at the diner and otherwise avoids interacting with him, which isn't that noteworthy since he's still mostly avoiding interacting with anyone. But at least he's drawing again. 

“Doing okay?” Brian says to him one day, quietly.

Justin realizes he's never had any idea if Brian's asking about him or his lungs when he says that. He always just says he's doing all right. 

“Not really,” he says, and Brian just nods a little.

**

“I might not be able to meet during the day for a while,” Justin tells Michael while they're planning out their next Rage issue. “I have to get this internship for school.”

“Internship and school and the diner?” Michael says.

“Thank God for my complete absence of a social life.”

“Where are you going to intern?”

“Yeah, I haven't figured that part out yet.”

“You could come to Vanguard,” Brian says. He's over at the other side of the shop waiting to take Michael home, rearranging the figurines into sex positions. 

Justin looks at him.

Brian shrugs. “Location's good. Right on the bus route.”

“That's true.”

“Art department's kind of sparse right now. We could use you.”

Brian could use him. 

He's by the window, and his eyes glow in the sunlight. 

“I'm not very good lately,” Justin says. His big work speaking for the disabled community has never felt further away.

“Neither are they. You'll fit right in.”

“You sure you want to see me everyday?” Justin jokes.

Brian puts some comic books out of order .“I see you everyday anyway, you're fucking everywhere.”

“I don't know,” Justin says. “I don't really like advertising.”

Brian shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

As if there's any question how this is going to go. Justin applies the next day.

**

Justin still doesn't really like advertising, but he likes working at Vanguard. He likes the challenge, and the people, and the work environment. He likes the way his coworkers talk about Brian, with this mix of reverence and fear, and how they work so hard whenever Brian comes down to get a smile or a nod or a handshake out of him. 

Justin likes being close to Brian.

He's given up pretending the air isn't electric when they're close. He smells Brian's cologne brush by him when he's in the hallway and feels his knees start shaking. He goes to sleep dreaming about the way Brian's hair is getting longer. 

“I am so fucked,” he says to Daphne.

“So why not just get him back? You know he still loves you.”

“I need more therapy,” Justin says. “I have to need less first.”

“Need less what?”

“Less everything. I'm working on it.”

But his therapist keeps focusing on his feelings instead of giving him strategies on how to be more self-sufficient, and Brian keeps standing too close to him when he checks Justin's work, so it's all very difficult.

“I want to make out with his face,” he tells Daphne.

“So I've heard.”

“I want to stare at his cock like it's a Degas.”

“Justin.”

“I know, I know.”

And his therapist says, “Have you asked him if he was overwhelmed yet?”

But everything is so safe right now, Brian in his office, Justin down in the art room, Brian in his loft, Justin on Daphne's couch. It's not _great,_ but it's safe.

But _Brian, Brian, Brian,_ says Justin's heart.

**

He probably would have continued like that forever, but he gets sick around the middle of January. It's nothing serious, but it's bad enough that he's coughing pretty constantly and he's just going to disturb everyone if he goes to work, especially since most of the people there have no idea he has CF and will think he's shown up with some sort of plague. Luckily Vanguard has a good work from home policy, so Justin curls up on his couch with his vest and works on digital proofs. Brian sends out an email to the art department midday letting them know they need to redo some boards for the Gaffner account, and Justin replies asking for clarification on something, and after Brian's sent that reply to everyone, Justin gets an email addressed just to him.

_home sick?_

Justin hates the way his heart flutters. He shouldn't want this attention. He can't want this. 

_I'm okay_ he writes back, and then throws in some bullshit question about the proofs he's working on to try to change the subject.

Brian gives the question all the attention it deserves—none--and writes back about twenty minutes later. _You can take the day off if you need to sleep._

_not tired_

_yeah, that sounds like you. do you have a fever?_

_it's low_

_is daphne there?_

_she'll be home in a few hours._

_have you eaten?_

_not yet_

_you never fucking eat._

It's too much. Justin covers his face with his hands and feels his chin shaking. It's too much, and it's too close, and he wants it so goddamn badly and he can almost touch it but he _can't._ He can't go through that he did with Ethan again. Not with Brian. It will fully, completely break him, because deep down he knows that Brian is his shot. And if he blows it, that's it. He's not going to love somebody else like this. 

But everything about him is genetically engineered to scare people away.

And just like that, he has to know.

 _Did you get sick of taking care of me?_ he writes, and he hits send before he can stop himself.

“Oh God,” he whispers. “Oh God oh God oh God.”

There are a million things Brian can answer this and Justin doesn't think he's prepared for any of them. 

But definitely not for what he gets. A plain, matter-of-fact, one-line response.

_I didn't take care of you._

**

Justin shows up at the office two hours later.

“You think you didn't take care of me?”

Brian blinks. “Christ, you look like—” 

“—like shit, we know, we know. What do you mean you didn't take care of me?”

Brian sighs, gets up and shuts the door. “Sit down before I have to call maintenance to scrape you off my floor.”

Justin sits, twisting his hand in his lap, and Brian leans against the door and doesn't look at him.

“Is that why you think I left?” Justin says.

“We really have to talk about this?”

“How the fuck else are we going to...” Justin gestures at him and then chickens out and says, “Keep working together.”

But Brian knows what he means. Brian knows what this is, what they've been teetering on the brink of since Justin left Ethan, since before Justin left Ethan. Justin can tell. He can always tell. 

“Do you really think that?” Justin pushes.

Brian shrugs a little.

This is impossible. Everything is spinning. “You've been stewing this whole time that you should have taken better care of me?”

“I have not been stewing.”

“Jesus, Brian!” 

“Why does this matter?” Brian says. “It's over. It's done.”

“It's not fucking over and it's not fucking done and you goddamn know it.”

Brian runs his hand down his face. “I mean, what the fuck else could have been the issue? What else did your little violinist have to offer that living with me didn't?”

“He wanted me there,” Justin says, like it's obvious, and Brian stares at him like his point is just as clear, and oh, oh. “But...you said I was only there until I was well.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“In the car, when I was leaving my mom's, you said—” 

_“You left because of an offhand comment I'd made a year before?”_ Brian says, and yeah, okay, it does sound a little ridiculous when you put it like that. 

But no. That's not fair. “You don't understand what it's like as a sick person to...to need people,” Justin says. “As soon as you let your guard down and show them what it's really like, they get freaked out and bail. You start looking for clues that they're getting there so you can get out before they throw you out.”

“Wow, I really don't love what this guy did to you.”

“This was always there,” Justin says. “He just...brought it up.” Justin pinches the bridge of his nose. “I can't believe you thought you didn't take care of me.”

Brian sits down at his desk. “You're really telling me I did enough.”

Justin pauses. “Maybe not...near the end.”

He throws his hands up. “So, there you go.”

“But that's not on you,” Justin says. “That's what I'm saying, I got complacent. I started needing too much.”

Brian squints at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I'm working with a therapist now, trying to figure out how to need less.”

 _“Need less?_ How the fuck does that work? You're gonna have, what, half a case of CF? You're gonna be sick on Wednesdays and every alternate weekend? What exactly is the plan here?”

“I just—”

“You have made yourself so fucking small already,” Brian says. “Christ, you don't even see it.”

“What are you—”

“You don't eat,” Brian says firmly. “You say you're fine when you're not. You sleep when you don't feel well instead of telling someone. You are so small and easy. You cannot need any less.”

Justin feels so, so lost. “So why did you pull back?”

“I wasn't trying to do anything. I'm not an expert at this, y'know?” He gestures at Justin. “All of this, being with someone, dealing with illness. I'm just making shit up as I go along. It's amazing I did okay as often as you say I did.”

God. He's asking Brian to be patient with him at the same time that he's expecting Brian to do everything perfectly the first time. He's fucking impossible. Justin breathes out. “I really fucked this up, didn't I.”

“Yes,” Brian says stubbornly, and Justin laughs a little and wipes his eyes.

“You really didn't want me to leave?”

Brian groans.

“I know, this is very difficult for you. I'm very proud.” Somewhere between sarcastic and sincere.

“Shut up.” Brian rubs his forehead. “If I want you to go I'll tell you to go.”

“But you won't tell me to stay.”

Brian looks at him for a long time then says, “Maybe fucking this up is somewhat of a common thread.”

“That's all I'm saying.” Justin coughs for a minute, then says, “So what now?”

Brian rolls his eyes. “Now you come home.”

Something flutters in Justin's stomach, but he says, “Not yet. I don't want to...”

“You're not.”

“You have to wait while I work this out,” Justin says. “Until I feel sure. I'm always going to be afraid of being a charity case. It's like part of the genetic code or whatever.”

Brian's eyes soften. “All right, then just come here for now. Come here.”

Justin wants him so badly he swears he can feel Brian's shirt between his fingers. “I'm all sick and sweaty and—” 

“Come _here_ for the love of fucking God how much longer do you really want to wait,” Brian says, and, well, he has a fucking point, so Justin comes around to the other side of the desk and kisses Brian until he runs out of air.

**

They stop by Daphne’s place to grab what Justin needs to stay overnight at the loft. Daphne rolls her eyes as soon as she sees them together. “Hey, lobsters.”

Brian stands by the door and tugs on Justin whenever he gets close. “Hurry uuuup.”

“What do you two have planned?” Daphne says.

“I’m going to show Justin my stamp collection,” Brian says. “Hurry. Up.”

Justin grabs his vest and his meds and his toothbrush and a change of clothes. “Okay.”

Brian takes the clothes from him and throws them on the bed. “You won’t be needing these,” he says, and he yanks Justin out the door.

**

Life is so good that it’s unrecognizable.

He and Brian are happy and this time Justin’s healthy enough to enjoy it. They go for walks and talk each other’s ears off. Justin paints, first at the loft and then at home after he and Daphne upgrade to a two-bedroom. He aces his classes, kills it at the internship, draws beautiful pages for Rage. Brian spends time with Gus, fucks Justin’s brains out, and continues to be Liberty Avenue’s resident sex God. They dance at Babylon and drink at Woody's with Daphne. Justin spends most nights at the loft, under the orange light, Brian falling asleep softly on some of him with a quiet, new, “Didya take your meds?”

Breakable heaven again, but it scares him less this time.

Things can get put back together.

**

The sex is unbelievable, but that goes without saying. Sex with Ethan was fine, but he’d never push Justin, always worried, treated him like he was breakable, stopped the second Justin showed any signs of struggle. Justin’s convinced that with Brian he could physically cough up his lung during sex and Brian wouldn’t address it until after they’ve both come. He’s not scared. He’s not turned off. He wants him.

Getting to be openly sick while someone tries to twist his hip at an angle that shouldn’t be possible, but oh God, oh God, right there?

Justin wonders if healthy people can even feel this happy, and then he looks at Brian’s face and thinks, maybe.

**

He’s in the third day of a hospital stay for a tune-up when Brian saunters in after work. “When did Leo get hot?” he says, washing his hands.

“He’s always been hot. Leo’s here?”

“Said he got in last night. His pseudo’s acting up.” One of the many infections people with CF can carry around. “You don’t have that one, right?”

Brian casually using CF terms is incredibly sexy. “Not yet.”

“Let’s keep that going. Looks like a bitch.” He comes over to the bed and kisses him. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

He sits in a chair by the bed and crosses his ankles on top of Justin’s leg. “You look tired.”

“Yeah, they beat me up today.” Hours and hours of PT. He’ll be grateful later, but right now it hurts.

“Well, don’t stay awake on my account.” Brian opens up his briefcase. “I almost didn’t come. Much to do.”

Justin cuddles into his pillow and watches him. “What are you working on?”

“Pretty soon you’ll be working on it too. New client. Stockwell campaign.”

“That Republican prick?”

Brian chuckles and shakes his head. “Ah, youth.”

“Yeah, because you’re such a conservative.”

“I’m an Independent,” Brian says.

“Mm, yes, and how do you vote?”

Brian glares at him.

“I wouldn’t be fucking you if you were a Republican,” Justin says.

Brian turns a page in his file. “You’d fuck me if I was on fire.”

Justin coughs and snuggles under his blanket. “You’re really going to help this guy get elected?”

“I’m going to make him some pretty posters and TV spots. What people do with those posters and TV spots is not my responsibility.”

“How do you sleep at night?”

“On top of a blond, wheezy nuisance,” Brian says casually, and Justin loves him so much.

**

“Stockwell?” Leo says, while they’re rolling wheelchairs back and forth in the hallway, six feet away from each other. “Why can’t Brian work for Deekins?”

“Stockwell has the rich donors he’s getting referrals to,” Justin says. “I can’t complain too much, considering it keeps me in pretty things.”

“Still, Stockwell,” Leo says, shaking his head.

“Is he that bad? I don’t know much about him.”

“Well, he’s not the biggest fan of gays.”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s really into institutionalization.”

Justin stops pushing his wheelchair. “Of disabled people?”

“Yeah. Getting them out of caregivers’ houses, putting them in private institutions. Burden off the taxpayer and all that.”

“Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Eeeexactly.”

Justin looks deeper into it once he's home from the hospital. He curls up with his laptop on the couch and searches Stockwell's website and then reads opinion pieces on both sides. “How much do you know about Stockwell's policies?” he asks Brian.

Brian's at the counter, eating blueberries by the handful. He is such a sucker for blueberries. It's adorable. “As little as humanly possible.”

“Brian.”

“I'm serious, it's better not to know. You think I know what Garner puts in those granola bars?”

“He's totally against gay marriage.”

“Something the governor of Pittsburgh is completely responsible for deciding, yes.”

“Okay, but he can decide to instate polices that put disabled people in institutions, have you heard about that?”

“No,” Brian says, flipping lazily through a catalog.

“He touts it as something that reduces hospital stays, keeps Pittsburgh's hospitals available for the 'general public.' And says it's better for the families of disabled people.”

“Okay, so what's the problem?”

“So what about the disabled people?” Justin says. “Is it better for them?”

**

It nags at the back of Justin's mind, and he can't get away from it, especially since most of his tasks at work now involve working on promotional materials for Stockwell. He throws himself into his classes and his treatments and Brian, and it works, mostly. They play board games with Daphne and have lunch with Jennifer and yeah, have a theoretically impossible amount of sex. Life is good, and Justin is happy, but it nags. 

“He'll probably lose anyway,” Daphne says. “He's behind in the polls.” But he's doing better and better each week, thanks in part to his sparkling ad campaigns. Justin tracks the results in the paper, but he doesn't talk about it with Brian. He keeps his mouth shut at Vanguard. He smiles politely when Brian brings Stockwell down and introduces him to the art department.

It nags, it nags, it nags.

**

Of all the things to come up to distract him, Michael and Ben pseudo-adopting a teenager wouldn't have been one that Justin predicted, but here we were. 

“Maybe you can talk to him,” Ben says, when he and Brian are over for dinner one night, and Hunter's locked in his room with a video game. “I think he just tunes me out. You're only a few years older than him. He'll be able to relate to you.”

“I can try,” Justin says, because he's lost a lot of his resentment about dealing with healthy-presenting sick people, because hell, he's doing pretty fantastic nowadays himself. He hasn't had an unscheduled hospital visit since he's been back with Brian, and at his last appointment his doctor said he looked the best he had since the pneumonia fiasco. 

Hunter, unsurprisingly, has no interest talking chronic illness, but in a strange twist he does seem to warm to Justin. It’s probably nice having someone around his age amongst the thirty-year-old horde he’s been shoved in. Justin takes him shopping for school clothes and they shoot the shit about boys and girls and Brian. They have ice cream afterwards at the diner—finally Justin has someone who can keep up with his calorie goals—and Justin gets back to the loft feeling peaceful and a little sad.

Brian comes and sits behind him on the floor, his legs on either side of Justin’s. He massages his scalp with one hand and pounds his back gently with the other and doesn’t make him talk.

Because what about kids like Hunter? Sick kids who don’t really have a home?

What’s going to happen to them?

And so the next day, after Vanguard is closed, Justin makes a poster.

Silhouettes of disabled people, in wheelchairs, with walkers, wearing hearing aids, holding canes, rolling an oxygen tank, standing there looking perfectly fine. Words in red at the bottom.

**WE CAN STILL FIGHT.**

**STOP STOCKWELL.**

**

He stays up well into the night papering the town, so he's tired the next morning when he arrives for his diner shift, but gratified when he finds out the topic du jour.

“Seems up your alley,” Debbie says to him.

“The imagery is a little obvious. I don't love faceless disabled people.” He couldn't figure out how to work around that without making the poster too busy to be effective. “Though the invisibly disabled person is a nice touch.” He was proud of that one.

“Oh, I was wondering what a normal person was doing there,” Debbie says, and Justin rolls his eyes at _normal_ and kisses her cheek. Never change, Debbie.

If Brian's upset about the posters smearing his best client, he doesn't show it. He reads the newspaper and turns his face up for a kiss when Justin comes by with the coffee pot, and Justin obliges, lingers. “Missed you last night,” Brian says, so softly, just for him.

“Homework. Sorry.” 

Brian studies him, and for a minute Justin thinks he's on to him, but he just says, “Tonight?”

He has another round of posters he wants to print out and put up tonight, but maybe if he starts a little earlier...“Yeah, I think so.”

Brian laughs a little and looks back at his newspaper.

“What?”

“Nothing, dear.”

**

**WE’RE NOT DEAD YET**

**CRIPPLES AGAINST STOCKWELL**

Just a shovel and some dirt and an overlay of Stockwell’s face. Nice and simple. He waits until everyone’s left Vanguard and stops making copies.

Or, at least, until he thought everyone had left.

“Well well well. If it isn’t my little masked avenger.”

Justin sighs and turns to the door. “I was just—“

“Yeah, I know what you were just, do I look like an idiot?” He comes over and opens the copy machine and well, that’s that then.

“What if I tell you I’m just doing it as a favor to the real masked avenger?”

“Oh, Leo’s an artist now?”

“Well, I did say the imagery was a little obvious.”

Brian takes the posters out of the copy machine and tosses them on a nearby table. “Shred those.”

“No.”

“Look, I know you’re frustrated. I get where you’re coming from, I do. But you made your statement and you’re fucking with my job now. Our jobs.”

“You don’t,” Justin says.

“I don’t what?”

“Get where I’m coming from,” Justin says. “You can’t. You’re not sick.”

Brian says, “You realize you’re not the kind of disabled person they’re talking about institutionalizing, right?”

“That doesn’t matter,” he says. “These are my people. It’s about our community.”

“God, if I never have to hear that word again—”

“See, you don’t get it. You don’t even care.”

Justin moves to get the posters off the table, to put them up come hell or high water, but Brian stops him with a firm hand on his chest.

“So explain it to me,” Brian says.

“Putting us in institutions is how they make us disappear,” Justin says. “They don’t want to look at us because we make them uncomfortable and sad and then they have to make things accessible to us, so they hide us away where they don’t have to see us. They lock us away where it’s hard for us to vote, or get any sort of platform or attention. We get abused or killed by caregivers at these homes and nobody cares, they actually get sympathy because taking care of us is so thankless and difficult and we’d probably rather be dead anyway, because who would ever want to me _disabled._ It scares them and disgusts them so they try to get rid of us. They take away our right to have a home. That’s what this is. This is where it starts.”

He stops to cough, and Brian watches him.

“Disabled people get killed by the police,” Justin says. “Jason Kemp was disabled and somebody killed him and the cops didn’t care. We’re not going to be safe with one as governor. I won’t be safe.”

Brian looks at him for a long time, then sighs, takes the posters, and hands them to Justin.

“Really?” Justin says.

Brian shrugs. “I follow your lead on this shit,” he says. “And you’re obviously serious about this.”

“I am.”

“So, okay, Joan of Arc. Let’s go paint the town.”

**

“Well, he’s scared,” Brian says, sliding the loft door shut behind him. “Came into the office all piss and vinegar today.”

Justin’s on the couch doing a vest session and scrolling news articles on his laptop. “But he’s still up in the polls. Nobody’s even writing about my posters. He shouldn’t give a shit. They’re doing nothing.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“Something that’ll get in the news. Make people pay attention. Where can we put him where I can yell at him publicly?”

He’s kidding, but Brian looks contemplative. And then his eyes light up.

“You’ve got it?” Justin says.

“I’ve got it.”

**

Stockwell's behind in voters aged eighteen to twenty-five, and Brian convinces him that that's where he needs to expend some energy. Some time. Make an appearance or two.

Like at a young voter's forum at the community center.

Justin sits in the crowd and listens to the stump speech, twisting his hands in his lap and trying to calm himself down. Daphne's next to him, and Leo is the required six feet away. Brian's standing in the back with the rest of Stockwell's army, and Justin has to resist the urge to keep twisting around to look at him. He's not feeling well, had a rough night that kept them both up and is still feeling it today at the bottoms of his lungs, but it's not exactly like Brian can manage the police chief's schedules around his intern's good days. Daphne takes his hand and runs her thumb over his.

The media's here. It's just local TV and newspapers, but it's _something._ This has to work. It has to. 

Stockwell stops speaking to start answering questions and, as planned, Justin lets a few people go first, asking Stockwell about social programs and gun control. Justin takes deep breaths through his nose, and when the questions pause, he raises his hand.

Stockwell calls on him.

“Twenty-six percent of Pittsburgh is living with a disability,” Justin says. “What is your plan to keep them safe when, as a police chief, you didn't prioritize cases involving attacks on young people with disabilities?”

Before he can answer, Daphne stands up.

“Black people with disabilities are the people most at risk of police violence,” Daphne says. “Eight Black people with disabilities were killed by policemen in Pittsburgh last year. That's higher than the national average.”

Leo stands. “Disabled people often face abuse from caregivers or hospitals and aren't able to report it. How are you going to empower them?”

And Justin says, “What was the name of the disabled gay man killed and found in a dumpster on Liberty Avenue?”

Stockwell doesn't say anything.

“This was under your time as police chief,” Justin says. “The murder wasn't solved, and his name was found by a civilian, because the police didn't put in the hours to solve it. What was his name?”

Stockwell says, “To go back to the question of—”

Justin stands up. “What. Was. His. Name?” 

Stockwell says nothing, and the cameras keep rolling.

**

Justin texts Brian to make an excuse to stay behind, and he meets him in a side room off the auditorium. Brian puts a hand under his elbow immediately. “Sit down.”

“I don't think it will help.” Justin bends down and puts his hands on his knees and tries to catch his breath. “God, I feel like shit.”

“You're panicking.”

“I know. That was fucking scary.”

“You did it, though. And they caught every minute of it.”

Justin coughs and lets out a long wheeze.

“In and out,” Brian says, his hand on Justin's back. “Easy air, nice and slow...good.”

“Forgot my fucking inhaler,” Justin says. 

Brian reaches into his pocket and takes one out. “Here.”

It's better than any stupid 'I'm proud of you.'

Justin uses the inhaler, Brian rubs his back, and that's when Stockwell walks in, looking for where the fuck his head of advertising got to. 

And that's how Brian loses his job.

**

Back at the loft, Brian crashes around the kitchen. Justin's reminded of a night two years ago, Brian's bruised ribs, this same guilty feeling in Justin's stomach.

“Do you want me to go?” Justin says. “I can go.”

Brian doesn't say anything.

“I'm going to go.”

“Justin.”

“Yeah.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Justin sits down on one of the barstools. “This is all my fault.”

“Pretty much.”

“Oh my God. What are you even doing?”

Brian takes out a box of brownie mix. “I need to get high and you can't be around smoke.”

“Considerate even at his lowest.”

“Stop writing my obituary. My job's dead, not me.” He sets a measuring cup down roughly. “Fuck Stockwell. Fuck Vance. Fucking cowards. I'm going to open my own fucking agency and then they'll see.”

Justin glows with pride.

“God, I need to get high,” Brian says.

**

Justin leaves Brian to his brownies and meets Hunter for dinner and gives him the rundown. “That's so fucking badass,” he says. 

“We'll see if it actually does anything. And if it was worth Brian losing his job.” He realizes at this point that he's probably lost his internship too. That's annoying.

“Weren't you scared?”

“Uh, shitless. Public speaking is not my thing. But God, seeing the look on his face. He had no idea what to say. When I asked him about Jason he totally froze.” 

Something passes over Hunter's face, so quickly Justin almost misses it. But not quite.

“Hang on,” Justin says. “Did you know him?”

Hunter shrugs.

“God,” Justin says. “Fuck, I'm sorry.”

“He was new,” Hunter says. “I didn't know him well or anything.” He plays with his napkin.

Justin leans forwards. “Do you know what happened to him? Who killed him?”

“Not...exactly.”

“Hunter.”

“I know who he was with,” Hunter says. “Not his name or anything, but...I know him. He hangs out at this bar on 7th.”

“You've...been with this guy?”

Hunter shakes his head. “He has a reputation for being...intense. I told Jason not to go with him.”

“Why haven't you told anyone?”

Hunter gives him a look. “Remember what you said about police violence against disabled people?”

“Oh. _Oh._ ”

“There you go.”

**

“He's a cop?” Brian says.

“Yeah. So I did some investigating, and Hunter said he hangs out on 7th avenue and there's a bar there that's apparently notorious for hustlers. It's got to be there.”

“Okay, so...”

“We have to go,” Justin says. “Hunter described the guy to me and I drew him, like a police sketch. Look.”

Brian gives the picture a glance. “Quite the attractive fucker, isn't he.”

“Sure. Brian.”

“So what do you suggest we do here, Sunshine, show up at this bar, hope this guy is there, and then...what? Wave our finger in his face and tell him what he did was very bad?”

“We get his name and some DNA. We go to the police.”

Brian collapses on the bed with a groan. “Haven't we saved the world enough for one week?”

“You need another brownie.”

Brian laughs at the ceiling. “No I do not.”

“We could solve a murder,” Justin says. “And if we prove that a cop killed a kid under Stockwell's leadership and the police couldn't even solve it...that could be the nail in the coffin. We could actually do something here, Brian.”

“Aren't you supposed to be all frail and tired? Where is this energy coming from?”

“Please?” Justin crawls on the bed next to him. “I'll dress up like a hustler so we blend in. I'll wear your leather jacket.”

“It's too big for you.”

“Please,” Justin whispers into his neck, and Brian covers his eyes.

“How do you fucking do this to me,” he grumbles.

**

They don't go that night, though, because Brian's too stoned and Justin's really starting to feel bad. He does a long session with his vest and his nebulizer that takes the edge off, but he's still coughing constantly and it's making his throat and head ache as much as his chest. Brian handles him gently that night, and neither of them is really surprised when Justin wakes him up in the middle of the night because he can't breathe. Brian sets up the nebulizer again and tucks Justin under his arm and asks him quietly if he wants to go to the hospital. Justin shakes his head.

“Just a bad night,” Brian says into his hair. “That's all it is. Just one bad night.”

Justin nods and shivers and spits into tissues and lets Brian calm him down.

**

He's feeling good as new, or whatever, a few days later, and he nags Brian until he finally agrees to head with him to the cop bar. Justin wears the leather jacket, as promised, and it's too big for him, as also promised, and Brian can't keep his hands off him. “Stooooop,” Justin says. “I need to look available so some old guy will want to fuck me.”

“I'm an old guy, fuck me,” Brian says, and Justin laughs.

He has the sketch pretty much committed to memory by now, but he brought it with him anyway, tucked into the pocket of the jacket. The bar is decrepit and filled with smoke, and Brian gives him a look when he starts coughing. 

“I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine.”

“Gonna be up all fucking night nursing you back to fucking health...”

“Yes, my cystic fibrosis is very difficult for you.” 

“That's all I'm saying.”

Justin slides into a seat at the bar. “I don't see him.”

“Well, you know what they say about patience.” 

Brian orders them each a double whiskey, and they sit and sip while Brian stares at his watch and Justin sneezes at the smoke. And then suddenly Hunter's there, coming up behind them. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he says.

“Shh,” Justin says.

“Oh, Sherlock Holmes shit. Okay.”

“You here on business or pleasure?” Brian asks him.

Hunter leans seductively against the bar. “How about some of both?”

Justin rolls his eyes.

“So where is he?” Justin says.

Hunter scans the room. “How the fuck should I know? He usually sits at that table in the corner. Guess he's not here tonight.”

Brian gives Justin a look.

They stick around for another hour, waiting for him to appear, but it's no use. Eventually Justin's out of breath enough that he has to call it quits, and he coughs the whole drive home while Brian probably strains his neck glancing over at him every couple miles to find out if he's still breathing. 

“We'll try again another night,” Justin says in the shower.

Brian just shakes his head. “That's enough.”

But it isn't. So the next night, he tells Brian he has homework, and he goes back on his own. 

And there he is. Kenneth Reichert. Justin finds out his name the same way he did Brian's, on a piece of mail after he brings him back to his apartment.

Nothing else is the same.

**

Justin's obviously not a stranger to the club scene, which means he's had sex that...didn't go great. Not in terms of just bad sex—though of course there's been plenty of that too—but situations where he wasn't in control, where men did things to him that he would rathered they didn't, where he felt pushed or coerced or yeah, maybe a little scared. He hasn't told Brian this, because Brian probably hasn't been in over his head since he was a teenager in a shower stall, but he's traded notes with guys—with Hunter—and he knows he's not alone. It's part of being on the small side and looking about five minutes older than the womb. 

So it's not as if he's expecting getting a DNA sample from the man who murdered a boy just like him to be a fun time to write home about.

For some reason it's still a surprise when he's choked.

**

“Jesus,” Brian says, bleary eyed and half-naked, when Justin comes tumbling through his front door at quarter to three. “Scared the shit out of me.”

“I didn't want to wake up Daphne.”

“What's wrong with your voice?” Brian switches on the light. “Christ, did you run all the way here? Sit down, I'll get you some water. You want the neb?”

Justin loves him so, so much. “I'm okay, really.”

“You don't sound okay.”

“Um...I have something,” Justin says.

“If it's a sex toy, I don't think you're in any condition at the moment.”

Justin takes the ziploc bag with the condom out of his pocket.

“What the fuck is—” Brian says, and then he stops, blinks, swallows. “Justin,” he says, his voice dangerously low. “What the fuck did you do?”

“I did what I had to do,” Justin says, and then he starts coughing hoarsely, brutally, and something flashes in Brian's eyes and before Justin can stop him he unwinds the scarf from around his neck. 

“Oh my God,” Brian says.

“It's not as bad as it looks.”

“You have a _breathing disorder._ ”

“I'm okay.”

Brian takes a few steps away, then turns back to Justin, and he's shaking with anger and maybe with something else. “What _exactly_ the fuck are you trying to do to me?”

“Brian, I'm so tired, can we—”

“We cannot, because I need to figure out whether to drag you to the fucking hospital! What the goddamn fuck were you thinking?”

“No one else could—” 

“ _Anyone else_ would have been better!”

“Just because I'm sick doesn't—” 

“Not because you are sick you fucking goddamn idiot, because you are _you!_ Goddamn it!” He kicks his desk. “Goddamn it!”

Justin tries to catch his breath. “Brian?”

“Do you think,” Brian says, his hands in fists. “That I do not worry about you every goddamn minute of every fucking day? Do you think I sleep?”

“Brian—” 

“You want to know if I think about when you're going to die, Sunshine? You want to know the answer to that fucking question? How often I think about it? How I count down the fucking _months_ you're supposed to have, I try to figure out how long I...and then you go and do something like—” 

Justin stands up and tries to take his hand, but Brian pulls it away.

“No! No. You do not get to fucking comfort me! You could have _died._ You could have died tonight and ended up in a fucking dumpster, is that what you want?”

“I just wanted to do the right thing.”

“The right thing is _staying here._ ” 

“Okay. Okay.”

Brian runs his hands down his face. “Holy shit. God.”

“I didn't...I didn't think it would scare you like this.”

Brian laughs bitterly.

“You always act like you're fine with this,” Justin says. “You joke about it with me. You don't...you don't treat me like I'm going to be gone soon.”

“Please shut up,” Brian says. “Please, for once in your life, just shut the fuck up.”

Justin does, and he just stands there helplessly and watches while Brian covers his eyes with his hands, tears leaving streaks down his face.

“I didn't think it would be as bad as it was,” Justin says softly.

Brian takes a deep breath and wipes his face off. “What do you need?”

“It was really awful,” Justin says, and now he's crying too, and his lungs can't really take that right now so he's choking pretty quickly. Brian guides him over to the sink, and he spits up blood and foam and tries not to scream.

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Brian says firmly. “Nothing.”

“Okay,” Justin whispers.

**

Justin spends most of the next few days curled up as small as he can in Brian's bed, so the news comes to him in pieces when Brian wakes him up to make him eat and take his meds. The DNA matches what they found in Jason Kemp. Reichert used to be Stockwell's partner. He resigned quietly right after Jason's body was found. And now he's killed himself.

“It's over now,” Brian says, helping Justin hold a glass of water. “You did it.”

Justin shakes his head. “It's not over.”

“He's dead.”

“Stockwell isn't.”

But he doesn't know what more he can do. He's sick and he's so, so tired. 

“Rest now,” Brian says softly. 

**

By the end of the week Justin's feeling mostly functional. He goes back to work at the diner and wears turtlenecks to cover the bruises. Brian's not watching him like a hawk anymore, but there's something different, something raw, in the way he's acting. He never meant to admit all those things he said after Justin came back from Reichert's, but he did, and now they just hang there in the air between them. It's not bad. Justin doesn't mind being worried about, cared about. There is some victory in knowing Brian loves him that much.

But there's sadness, too, and he sees it in Brian's eyes. Brian wanted to protect him from that, didn't want to put that guilt on him. Wants Justin to be able to die, live, in peace.

But that's not what being in love is, Justin is figuring out. It's not like being alone, where he's sort of drowning. It's not like being with Ethan, who heroically plunged into the water so that Justin could swim.

It's just two people, holding hands, diving in. As deep as they have to.

**

Brian did something, clearly, because every commercial break that day is showing an ad from the Concerned Citizens for the Truth. Brian somehow got these facts into the right thing, and Justin is thinking about how much money that TV spot must have cost when he walks into the loft and everything is gone. 

Brian is barefoot and he pushes and pulls on Justin's body like it's a part of his. “I may have made a hasty decision,” he says.

“You really did this?”

“This asshole I know almost died for what he believed in,” Brian says. “I figured I could sell some shit.”

They lie on the bed and kiss so peacefully. Not rushing to remove their clothes. Not taking Justin's air. Just being there, with nothing else.

It's enough.

**

They win.

For once, for goddamn once, the cripples win the world. 

Justin's tired, too tired for the screaming and the hugging and the dancing in the street, so Brian has him climb onto his shoulders so he can see the crowd. So he can see what they did, together.

Justin folds his arms on top of Brian's head and rests his chin in his hair. Brian spins him around, slowly, so he can see it from every angle.

Justin feels like he'll never come down. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Calliesky for supporting this fic! 
> 
> To get updates as I write and to find out how to support, there's a twitter for that! Twitter.com/LaVieEnRoseFic. :)


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